


There Are No Winners—Only Truths

by Six_Piece_Chicken_McNobody



Series: Windmills & Windowsills [9]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Scala ad Caelum (Kingdom Hearts)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 16:57:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20343541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Six_Piece_Chicken_McNobody/pseuds/Six_Piece_Chicken_McNobody
Summary: In Xehanort's twilight years, Scala ad Caelum greets him like an old friend—with bitterness, suspicion, and hostility.





	There Are No Winners—Only Truths

**Author's Note:**

> Check out some more fic-inspired artwork [here](https://twitter.com/SpacePenguin10/status/1155973820177498112) and [here](https://kingdomcarrots.tumblr.com/post/185872374163/httpsarchiveofourownorgworks19067815-cry), if you haven't already. You guys rock.
> 
> And now, the last installment of Windmills & Windowsills. Takes place just before the final battle of KH3.

Xehanort struggles not to collapse as he coughs up seawater. It drips from his clothes and sizzles dry on the white stones beneath his hands and knees. His eyes burn with salt and sunlight, too much for him to look up yet, but he doesn’t need to. He knows where he’s been sent.

With wet and ragged breaths, he forces himself to his feet. Time has been one of the most valuable weapons in his arsenal, but also his most patient adversary. He bent it to his will, and it punished his body in return, no matter how much youth he tried to syphon from other vessels. Xehanort knows there’s no point in being resentful over this. His plans have always relied on the universe operating exactly as it should, after all, correcting itself every time he tips it on its axis. Darkness flourishes, and light blooms to extinguish it. Chaos explodes, and order picks up the pieces. Xehanort turns the clock backward, upside-down, and inside-out, and the years continue to pass.

When he’s standing upright—as upright as he can stand these days—he tugs his coat into place and finally lifts his head. Scala looks so much like he remembers that it’s paradoxically like seeing it for the first time again. His gaze is drawn to the windmills, stalks and splashes of color sticking out against the white like flowers bursting through cracks in a road. He studies their height, the shapes of their sails, the speed at which they turn. Most of these details were preserved in his memory, eidetic images of an unforgettable world. And others slowly shifted, until Xehanort rewrote parts of Scala in his own mind, making a green windmill blue, or changing a westward gate to a southbound one. Little alterations that he never would’ve noticed if he hadn’t been allowed to come back.

And he makes no mistake: this _is_ an allowance. In his youth, he had congratulated himself on finding the path to Scala, when he’d first set out from the islands in search of another world. A _new_ world, as if the universe would spin one into existence out of nothing, just for him.

But Scala, like all worlds, has a will of its own. It is a place that one is either sent to or brought to, not a place one can choose to go to. It had taken Xehanort a long time to accept that his path was charted before he ever set sail.

It had taken him even longer to recall exactly what—_who_—had set him on that path in the first place. But eventually, it all came flooding back, easing his fears of powerlessness and predetermination. He remembered the shadowy, amorphous thing that had found him on the cusp of adulthood, standing on the shoreline, gazing at the horizon and trying to see a future there.

In the end, the hand that charted his path and governed his fate had always been his own, reaching back through time to guide him.

Xehanort inhales deeply and fills his lungs with the breath of Scala’s seas and skies. The ocean here always nagged at him, refusing to match the smell of saltwater that had surrounded him for the first seventeen years of his life. But now, with decades of experience traveling through empty space, the answer is obvious. Scala’s ocean doesn’t smell like water. It’s the scent of the ocean between worlds.

And after all these years of voyaging across that ocean, Xehanort has ended up as a castaway, tossed on the pier of the only world he thought he’d never return to. He grips the railing at the water’s edge to stave off a rush of dizziness. Maybe it’s just a side effect of being thrust between worlds, between dimensions, through a channel cut by his own heart. But the entire town shimmers for a moment, like a mirage, born of a heat wave and the refraction of light. He stares at one of the windmills until the spinning of its sails counteracts the spinning in his head. When he feels centered again and everything around him settles in its proper place, he lets go of the railing and walks under the arched gate, officially entering Scala once more.

It feels even more familiar on the inside. The stone mosaics on the ground, the flat rooftops, the gentle slope of the street. Regret isn’t in Xehanort’s nature—he decided long ago that any man who knew how to travel through time had forfeited his right to have regrets. But if there was one thing he’d change, it would be how much time he spent away from this world.

Of course, it wasn’t _entirely_ his fault. If a certain young Master hadn’t driven her Keyblade into the heart of Departure, changing it from the inside out, then maybe he could have found his way back sooner.

Still, now that the pawns have served their purpose, Xehanort can freely admit that what she did to that world was the stuff of miracles, magic of the highest order, a display of awesome and terrible might. Xehanort had destroyed Departure, but Master Aqua transformed it, changing the very nature of the world itself. And on her first try, too.

Sometimes, Xehanort wonders if his interference was necessary at all. His plans had hinged on Terra failing his Mark of Mastery exam and Aqua succeeding in his place, but he hadn’t expected her success to be so thoroughly earned.

And yet, she was a wretched girl. Whatever she did to Departure, she’d done it _fast_, and Xehanort hadn’t even been able to find the world again after she worked her magic. But what had been destroyed was restored, what had slumbered was reawakened, and what had been lost to time and space is now laid at Xehanort’s feet. He starts walking up the main road, folding his hands behind his back and letting his gaze follow the gondola cars that still glide just a little too close for comfort, always looking like they’re about to knock something over or scrape the road, although they never have. He almost smiles as he watches them roll up and down their cables.

As he climbs the first staircase, he feels a surprising but not completely unprecedented bout of sentimentality. It isn’t a feeling he’s had much experience with. Even when he returned to the islands—thinking, in some perverse way, that his old world might be a source of comfort for his dying apprentice—he never felt any loyalty to those tropical shores, not even on principle. After all the worlds he’s explored in his lifetime, he’s sure of it: this fondness in his chest is reserved for Scala, and Scala alone.

The feeling doesn’t seem to be mutual. The deeper he goes into town, the more Scala acts like a mirage again, trying to elude him. Buildings tense up when he extends his hand. Iron gates creak without moving. Only the windmills seem at ease, turning on and on, as reliable as time itself.

Xehanort stops in the middle of the road and frowns. He hadn’t expected a particularly lively welcome, but he hadn’t expected a ghost town, either. Even the seagulls are gone—hiding, or missing?—and without their raucous cries, the sky feels vacant. He looks up at the buildings, which now seem like fortresses designed to keep him out, and down the street, which stretches farther than he remembered, as if it never wants him to reach his destination. All the familiar details, which had been so comforting when he first arrived, start to take on a new light.

Scala remains spitefully stagnant, frozen in time, and it forces Xehanort to acknowledge how much he himself has changed. The young, promising disciple who once lived in this world, trained in its halls and studied its history and arts, is nowhere to be found in the man who stands here now. Instead of welcoming him back, the entire world is like a snake rattling its tail, warning him to stay away for the good of them both. Xehanort has no doubt that Scala knows, on some level, what’s about to transpire. The towns form a neural network beneath the ocean, and all of them are balking at his presence. He left this world as a Master, and he’s come back as a pariah, a parasite looking to draw more life from one of his many hosts.

“Have it your way,” Xehanort says curtly. “You know I didn’t ask to return.” He continues his walk, disappointed but not disheartened. He’s no stranger to this kind of reception. The only thing he _is_ a stranger to, apparently, is everyone and everything he once knew.

He’s not the only one who’s changed, however. Scala is meant to be an ageless, undying place, an eternal wellspring that all other worlds can find their way back to when they fall. And although it still looks orderly and maintained, Xehanort can feel its disharmony like an arrhythmic heartbeat with every step he takes. The surface-level glamor can’t hide it from him.

The sooner he brings his plans to fruition, the better, if only to put this world—and every world like it—out of their misery. He takes a left turn, still knowing the quickest route to the tower by heart, and _Eraqus jostles him as he races down the street, repeating, “We’re dead, we’re dead, we’re seriously _dead_.”_

_“I _told_ you to keep an eye on the time,” Xehanort says, running after Eraqus and overtaking him quickly._

_“And I told _you_ to wake me up if I fell asleep!” Eraqus fires back. His baggy sleeves make it difficult to keep his books from slipping out of his arms, and it occurs to him that he might be more aerodynamic if he ditched the robe entirely. Xehanort pauses at the end of the street to catch his breath, and he doubles over when he sees Eraqus balancing the stack of books in one arm while desperately flapping his sleeve with the other, all without slowing down._

_“You look like—a seagull—with a broken wing,” Xehanort laughs, snorting when Eraqus finally gets the sleeve off and nearly trips over it._

_“Stop _laughing_,” Eraqus snaps when he finally catches up. “We’re gonna be in so much trouble, it’s not even funny.”_

_“I’ll tell you what,” Xehanort says, pulling Eraqus’s other sleeve off and bundling the robe under his arm as they sprint. “If we make it in time, I won’t say a word about it ever again. But if we _seriously_ miss our exam because of your afternoon nap, I’m gonna bring it up every day for the rest of our lives. Deal?”_

_Eraqus shoves him, and Xehanort shoves him back, laughing again in spite of the situation as they bolt around the corner together._

Xehanort stares at the spot where they disappeared, as if he’s waiting for them to return. When he sees and hears nothing—not even fading footsteps—he rushes to the end of the street, but it’s already too late. By the time he looks around the corner, the road is empty.

He takes a deep breath, more rattled than he’d care to admit. But the road is empty, the town is empty, the _world_ is empty. He’s alone. He exhales decisively, setting his jaw and steeling his nerves.

“A ghost town, indeed,” he murmurs as he continues on his way.

It’s been quite a while since he’s suffered from flashbacks. Whether they stem from repression or amnesia, he supposes the end result is more or less the same. The mind may try to keep the memories down, like forcing something filled with air to stay submerged underwater. But the second he lowers his guard, they rise faster than they can be contained, breaking the surface with little warning. It’s jarring, but ultimately harmless.

Xehanort reaches the upper levels, high enough that he could brush his fingertips against a passing gondola, if he were so inclined. He keeps his hands folded at the small of his back, a posture he assumes by default, and wanders on.

He’s done a lot of wandering, mostly on his own. It led him to have little debates with himself, to keep his mind sharp as he journeyed through the stars. He once tried to decide which was worse: a wandering fool, or a stationary one. A fool who didn’t know where he was going, or a fool who didn’t know he could go anywhere. In the end, he supposed it didn’t make much difference. A fool is a fool, and all the more so for trying to measure his foolishness against another’s.

_“So, let me see if I’ve got this right,” Eraqus says from the edge of a rooftop, twirling a dandelion between his thumb and forefinger until the spores drift away on the wind. “If a fool tries to determine how foolish he is, then that just makes him more of a fool. But shouldn’t that make him wise? You know, having the self-awareness to realize he’s a fool in the first place?”_

_“What are you asking _me_ for?” Xehanort says, propping one foot on the edge of the roof so he can rest his elbow on his knee, letting his other leg swing in the air. “I thought this was your area of expertise.”_

_Eraqus holds the dandelion up and blows the remaining tufts into Xehanort’s face. He laughs as Xehanort sneezes and tries to snatch the flower away from him. They grapple over it for a few seconds, until they lean a little too close to the edge of the roof. In an instant, they go from shoving to grabbing, each using the other as an anchor to keep from falling. For a moment, neither one of them moves, and then they carefully help each other lean back, laughing in nervous relief. “All right,” Xehanort concedes, “we’re _both_ idiots.”_

Xehanort raises his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, but the gesture wipes the memory out of sight as if it never happened. The rooftop is empty again. He stares at it, then drops his arm and looks around at the equally empty buildings and tables and benches. “So, this is your game?” he asks, almost impressed. “Trying to appeal to my pathos? You think that’s why I’m here? You think that will be enough to sate me?”

Scala gives no response aside from the soft, wooden creak of its windmills, which Xehanort used to find soothing. With a dissatisfied grunt, he continues on, pretending that his questions were meant to go unanswered.

He approaches an odd, out-of-the-way bench that strikes a familiar chord, though it takes him a moment to remember why. Then he clenches his jaw and hurries past, keeping his eyes fixed ahead. The last thing he needs is to witness his younger self sitting_ alone, not on the bench, but on the ground beside it, using it for both shelter and support as he leans his head against the metal armrest._

_It’s only been two weeks since he arrived in Scala. If anyone were to find him in this state, they’d assume it was just homesickness getting to him. But he’s not homesick for the islands. He’s still yearning for some concept of home that he’s never quite had, until now. The sudden sense of belonging has set in too fast, after seventeen years of growing up without it. It leaves him overwhelmed and sitting on the ground like a lost child, reeling at how easy it can be, now that he’s found the right place, the right people, the right person. He cries because he’s realizing that there wasn’t anything wrong with him after all, that he wasn’t some heartless freak with no loyalty or love for his home._

_He was simply born a universe away from it._

Xehanort leaves the memory behind him, feeling deep shame at the spectacle he’d made of himself. He had done his best to fight it down, at least—a few sobs escaped, but the rest of his grief stayed hard and coiled in his throat.

Where had it gone, Xehanort wonders? Had it found a way out eventually, without him knowing? Through tears shed in his sleep, or in more forgiving laughter during the day, easing the weight of his sorrow? Or had he never gotten rid of it? Does he still carry that grief and inexplicable sense of loss to this day, calcified in his chest like the stone of a star-shaped fruit?

“Master” Terra had carried one of those with him—a charm, made of metal and glass, but unmistakable in its meaning. Xehanort should have shattered the thing as soon as he took over that body. He’s still not sure why he didn’t. Maybe to prove that it was just a symbol after all, with no real power over him, or anyone.

It doesn’t matter what his reasons were. It’s not like Terra questioned it. He hardly questioned anything until it was too late, which was exactly what Xehanort had expected of him. Just about everyone had met his expectations, in fact, if not exceeded them. Even young Ventus had finally released that anger of his. Of course, this all could have been avoided if he’d simply done so in the first place, but the second-best time to plant a tree and all that.

The person who surpassed his expectations the most, however, was the person Xehanort thought he knew best. Eraqus, in his anger, had called upon a light so blinding that it might as well have been darkness. While Xehanort had prepared himself for the emotional burden of giving his old friend an untimely and undeserved passing, he hadn’t prepared for Eraqus to genuinely need to be stopped. In the end, it had almost felt like an act of justice to deliver the fatal blow.

Light and darkness, opposite yet identical—a living Fata Morgana after all. Xehanort once compared Eraqus and himself to that mirage, as if they were two halves of a whole, inherently linked even when they were apart. It proved to be a more fitting analogy than he realized. He went on sailing across the oceans of time and space, and at every new horizon, there was Eraqus: a ghost hanging over his head.

When Xehanort reaches the highest street, a pair of voices drift quietly from a patch of grass. He doesn’t look, and he doesn’t hurry, either. This town can keep exhuming memories, digging them up from the grave of his heart, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to get any more reactions out of him.

_They move slowly in the cool morning air, shifting from one tai chi pose to the next with fluid grace, though Eraqus’s footwork is absolutely atrocious. He keeps straying into Xehanort’s field of motion. Xehanort is no better. He sweeps his arms in an arc that’s far too wide, as if he’s holding a huge, invisible sphere. Eraqus imagines that Xehanort reserves that space for all the worlds he wants to visit someday, literally holding them in his hands. But when Eraqus steps to the side, smoothly and unsubtly putting himself in that space instead, Xehanort lets him. He loops his arms around Eraqus’s waist and bends down to kiss his cheek. Eraqus leans back, enjoying the solidity of Xehanort’s chest and arms, then turns around without leaving his embrace and reciprocates the kiss, their exercise forgotten._

They always promised to have each other’s backs, but all that meant was that they never saw eye-to-eye. In the end, their Fata Morgana was nothing but a shadowy Other and a trick of the light, half real and half false, living in tandem for one ephemeral moment until reality ensued. Xehanort had thought there was something darkly romantic about the idea of ghost ships, but that was before he set sail for the unknown, and before Eraqus devoted himself to Departure for good. Over time, Xehanort became a ghost ship himself, appearing at brief intervals on a horizon that Eraqus hardly even looked at anymore.

Their relationship had become a mirage long before their final falling out, Xehanort assures himself. Long before he destroyed the only person in all the worlds who could have forgiven him for doing it.

When he finally enters the tower, he lets his eyes shut and his shoulders droop. The marble floors and pillars reflect coolness as much as the exterior of the buildings reflect light. And while he can’t prove it, he feels as if Scala’s watchful gaze is easing up, too. Maybe it senses how old he’s gotten, how he needs little accommodations here and there—breaks from the sun, breaks to catch his breath. Breaks from scrutiny and distrust.

He still feels its hostility, though, however subdued. Frankly, he welcomes it at this point. It’s better than the way Departure used to cautiously greet him whenever he visited, weakly opening its arms as if it felt sorry for him. As if Xehanort lacked something in his life that that world could provide, if he would only let it.

Xehanort takes his time ascending the stairs, giving the tower its due reverence before he turns it into a battleground. He proceeds even more slowly when he hears footsteps and voices down the hall, his hand like an open claw at his side, ready to defend himself with a violent burst of magic. When he realizes it’s just his own voice again, yet another unbidden memory, he almost considers casting the spell anyway, out of sheer spite.

His voice and Eraqus’s drift out from one of the rooms, and while Xehanort can make out their dialogue perfectly—an average study session, one of hundreds—the door is only open a few inches, preventing him from seeing inside. He leaves it be and continues on, only to pass another room with a conversation floating out through the crack in the door. Unlike outside, where the memories intruded on his path, demanding an audience, these ones trickle out from unseen corners—tempting him, as always, to open the door and see what lies beyond.

He resists the urge. His residual fondness for Scala ebbs and flows, and at the moment, it’s ebbing fast. Throwing memories in his face, Xehanort can accept, but there’s no excuse for trying to turn him into a voyeur of his own life.

As he goes up the hallways, he passes another study room, this time the hidden stage for one of their many, _many_ arguments. It’s nothing out of the ordinary—Xehanort trying to get Eraqus to expand his worldview, and Eraqus trying to rein in Xehanort’s ambition. They were so opposite, and yet so alike in their stubbornness. They knew each other better than anyone and refused to admit it, choosing instead to convince themselves that they could get the other to change his mind with enough wheedling and prodding and passive aggressive hints.

They wised up as the years went on. The betrayal still stung, and it came out in the bitterness of their arguments about recklessness _this_ and stagnation _that_. But as the fights escalated, the appeals and demands decreased. They learned to get by without relying on each other. Gradually, their reunions became less about trying to rekindle an old bond and more about halfheartedly nudging the embers, just to see if that flicker of nostalgic, irrational hope had done them both a favor and died already.

When Xehanort approaches the training hall, he tries to ignore whatever memory is resurrecting itself in there, and yet he also strains to hear it. The door is ajar, but again, he resists the temptation. Open doors—even if only a few inches—don’t interest him as much as closed ones.

Besides, he refuses to break his unspoken promise, even now. On their final night in Scala, after taking one last walk through the tower together, he and Eraqus had deliberately left this room untouched. It was a romantic idea, an attempt to distill at least one memory, letting it live on forever as a testament to those days when nothing was at stake but a simple chess game.

He has no intention of opening the door, but he does pause to lean closer to it. For whatever reason, he expects to hear some meaningful memory, some conversation they had long ago repeating itself now, an echo that took decades to resound, waiting for the right heart to wander by.

But there aren’t any words—just laughter. He hears himself try to speak through it, which only makes Eraqus laugh harder. He can’t for the life of him remember what they’d said or done to amuse each other so much. After spending so much time together, they had reached a point where they didn’t need to say anything. A knowing look or a half-finished thought was more than enough to set them off.

Xehanort stands there for a moment, listening to the shameless, teary-eyed, stitches-in-sides laughter, before he walks away. Of all the memories that have inflicted themselves on him since he arrived in Scala, he already knows this is the one that will haunt him the most.

There’s nowhere left to go but up, so he ascends the final staircase. An ache spreads through his head and his chest, and the higher he goes, the louder and stronger it becomes, like a bell rung backwards. Heights have never bothered him before, but now he feels as if he has vertigo. He could chalk that up to his age just as easily as he could chalk it up to Scala’s atmosphere, tense and esoteric and still brimming with hostility.

But it all melts away when he steps out into the open air. Finally, that oppressive, watchful presence draws back into its shell, and Xehanort lets it, almost compassionately. Scala can try to conserve its energy, if it wants. But if it won’t rise to meet Xehanort’s challenge, then Xehanort will simply have to drag both of them down.

That’s still a little later on, though. For now, Xehanort moves slowly into the sunlight again, savoring each step forward. The highest point of this tower has always been reserved for Keyblade Masters, and _only_ Keyblade Masters. Xehanort had been tempted to sneak up here during his training, but he never did. Some things were still forbidden to him back then, because some things were still sacred.

Now, he takes his first step onto that platform, cut with stark swatches of black and white, and laced with delicate gold. He makes his way to the center, crossing over a circular pattern marked with seven points, like a clock reminding him that he has always had less time than he thought. He stands in that circle with every right to be there, and the longer he tries to revel in it, the more he realizes that this revered, ceremonial place is just the roof of the tower, dressed up with gold and glass in order to seem more special than it is.

Just like how the worlds he visited weren’t unique on their own, nor his vessels inherently remarkable. It was the transgression that made these things special, the going where he wasn’t meant to go, or doing what he wasn’t meant to do. He shakes his head at himself, amused but too tired to laugh. He should have come here as a student after all, back when it would have been a victory, instead of simply the end of a long and arduous hike up several flights of stairs.

Desires don’t age well, Xehanort has come to understand. They’re meant to be acted on, not stored away until they grow stale. As he looks around at this supposedly sacred place, he can’t help wondering—not for the first time, but possibly for the last—if there’s anything quite as hollow as the realization of a long-term goal.

He’s too high up to hear any of the lullaby-soft sounds from below. Even the wind is maddeningly gentle. And, as expected, there are no memories to cross his path in a place he’s never been before. For the first time in a long time, Xehanort is truly alone.

His fingers twitch, and when No Name appears, they wrap around its hilt automatically. Xehanort barely registers the change. He’s busy staring at Scala, his gaze sweeping over more towns than he’s ever been able to see before, not even from the highest gondola cars, or from the edge of a balcony where he once made the most horribly vulnerable confession of his life. When he first arrived in this world, the sight of the tower had floored him. Now, the sight _from_ the tower is almost enough to bring him back down to his knees.

He’s not conflicted. He knows what he’s doing. He even knows why. But it’s been a long time since he revisited certain memories, and after being an unwilling audience to a slideshow of his past, he can no longer bridge the gap between then and now. All he knows is that he stands here today, a decrepit and twisted old man, and he’s seen himself from years ago, a healthy and ambitious youth. And the middle is a blur.

His relationship with Eraqus is no exception. Whatever was left of it had been irreparably broken in that final blow-out, the only one that had escalated to a physical fight. Eraqus had questioned Xehanort point blank about his intentions, and Xehanort, as always, explained them, simply because Eraqus had asked.

Their relationship collapsed for good that afternoon, but so much of it had slipped away long before then. It was such a subtle shift that Xehanort could hardly say when it happened. Eraqus had claimed that the journey was the best part, even more important than the destination, and was not to be missed. Xehanort had always listened to him, but maybe he should have listened harder.

Then again, Eraqus’s advice was best taken with a grain of sand. He’d also said that Scala was just a stopping point, and that no one was ever meant to stay. And Xehanort is gripped once more by the desire to prove his old friend wrong. He feels so pleasantly _removed _up here, after being tangled in a web of his own design for decades. Removed from the creaking windmills and the water lapping up against the town’s foundation, and yet more connected to them than ever.

After everything he’s gone through, everything he’s _done_, he couldn’t have been less prepared for the temptation to walk down to the training hall, lay No Name back on its ceremonial mantle for good, and finally be at peace.

Without realizing it, he’s made his way from the center of the tower to the edge. He gazes at the crowd of towns, which have never looked so blisteringly white before, and at the sea and sky, which have never looked so hatefully blue. The entire world is shining light on him, still resisting his presence in every way it can, and he doesn’t blame it. He can’t even resent it. All that’s left in him is empty fondness.

He finally gives No Name some attention, gripping the hilt with one hand and cradling the blade with the other. Like Xehanort, it shows its age, and also like Xehanort, it’s as formidable now as it’s ever been. He tilts it until it catches the light.

Eraqus never seemed jealous of him for inheriting this prized Keyblade. Xehanort couldn’t figure out if he was just too good a friend to let his jealousy show, or if it truly never occurred to Eraqus to want more than what he’d been handed. Master’s Defender suited him, though, just as No Name suits Xehanort. Maybe Eraqus always understood that.

Scala, No Name, and Eraqus—his home, his sword, and his star. At this point, they all elicit the same contradictory blend of deep-rooted devotion and total apathy. But no matter what, Eraqus always remained a fixture in Xehanort’s life, the only person Xehanort was willing to offer himself up to on the altar of his own heart. Even after their falling out, after spending all those years apart, no one had taken his place. No one had come close.

Eraqus didn’t just get into Xehanort’s heart before the door closed. He was the one who closed it.

Xehanort rubs his thumb along No Name, the same sword he felled Eraqus with and plunged into his own chest. Then he reaches out over the edge of the tower and lets it go. It’s an impulsive, destructive little urge, like throwing stones into the ocean back on Destiny Islands just to see how much of a splash they would make. Or sitting on that paopu tree, ensuring with his constant weight that the sideways-growing trunk would never correct itself. Or tinkering with the hearts of worlds, poking and prodding them in some kind of global vivisection.

The Keyblade tumbles down the side of the tower, striking the walls and leaving its mark over and over again. Xehanort loses sight of the weapon before it hits the ground, if it even makes it that far. Keyblades are loyal but famously self-reliant, and No Name vanishes in midair, returning of its own volition to the very hand that let it fall.

Xehanort turns the weapon over, studying it calmly as if it never left. “We have equal wills, you and I,” he says. “When I call you, you must come. But I cannot keep you away.” He lets out a single laugh, mirthless and wry. “You truly are a double-edged sword.”

No Name stares at Xehanort. Its marbled gaze is merciless, but uncruel. It has the passivity of something that’s witnessed more than any one person possibly could, even someone like Xehanort. Its stare could cut stone, stain glass, pierce straight through Xehanort’s soul while leaving the man himself intact. The longer Xehanort looks into its eye, the more that eye seems like the only fixed point in all the worlds. It’s starting to feel less like No Name is passed down from Master to Master, and more like the Masters are passed along to it instead.

“Who has been wielding whom?” Xehanort murmurs. No Name simply lays in his hands, resting, letting the new nicks and scratches on its surface cool.

Xehanort has been nicked and scratched, too. Melted down, reshaped, and reforged so many times that he feels both battle-worn and brand new. No one has been fragmented quite like him before. If Eraqus was a stained glass window, then Xehanort is a mosaic, a thousand sharp pieces coming together to make a not-quite-whole image. From a distance, maybe he can pass, but up close, the empty spaces show.

It was so long ago that Xehanort severed his own heart and retroactively changed his life. And yet, he still feels governed by that choice. The flow of time has carried him in a circle, or at least a spiral, reciting the same lines, seeing the same faces, again and again, trapping himself in an endless loop like a serpent eating its own tail.

For the first time, Xehanort wonders if it’s possible that he made a mistake. _Maybe I should go back in time and warn myself_, he thinks sarcastically. But the time for self-doubt has passed. The Keyblade’s chosen one will arrive soon, and he deserves a reason for coming all this way. So, with one last look at the stage of their impending clash, Xehanort dismisses his Keyblade, turns away from the top of the tower, and starts his long climb back down the stairs.

He feels Scala’s watchful presence once he’s indoors again, along with a dark crackle in the air. His vessels have found him at last, and they’re finally starting to take form. They haven’t gotten the hang of it yet, but they will soon enough. It’s their sole reason for existing, after all.

They blink in and out of sight at the edge of his vision, vanishing when he turns his head. Every time he feels the air pressure change or sees a wisp of black smoke, he can sense No Name, anxiously waiting to be summoned. Xehanort refrains. If he can’t trust his power over his own vessels, then he deserves whatever they might do to him. Besides, it’s nice to have company.

As his acolytes flicker around him like glitching data, Xehanort ponders what it would be like to create multiple versions of himself for real, to live out all the different lives he’s come to want. The man who would reset the universe to a fundamental, neutral balance of light and darkness. The wayfarer journeying endlessly from one world to the next, just for the sheer privilege of seeing them. And the man he didn’t even know he wanted to be until he came to Scala and met Eraqus.

Xehanort always knew that their time together was special, but age and experience have taught him what that truly means. Things that are special enough to treasure are too special to ever be recaptured. Fleeting moments—a green glow at sunset, a mirage on the horizon, a shooting star—kept in the heart but lost to time. It’s been a hard truth to accept, but Xehanort knows that memories are all he was ever going to be able to keep.

So, when he approaches the training hall one last time, he doesn’t set his jaw or hurry past with his eyes ahead and his mind elsewhere. He slows down, stops just outside the door, and listens.

“_…don’t get why anyone would initiate a war_…”

Xehanort remembers this conversation well. He had thought he was so crafty, so clever, baiting Eraqus into a discussion about the lost Masters, trying to get him to share whatever secret knowledge he might have, or admit that he had it in the first place. As if it would have been that easy—Eraqus never even explained the rules of chess. The only reason Xehanort learned how to play was through an infuriating process of trial and error, and his own powers of deduction. It had been worth it in the end. He was always more comfortable with victories he had to work excessively hard to achieve, and Eraqus’s awestruck delight when Xehanort stumbled into classic strategies without any help was a nice bonus.

And yet, for all his competitive nature, Xehanort can barely remember the games he won or lost. All the gloating over victories and grumbling over defeats are nothing compared to the laughter and teasing, and the afternoon sunlight streaming into the room, warming the already warm space between them.

“_I’m not following you_.”

“No,” Xehanort agrees, his voice full of bitterness without blame. “You never did. And you never would.”

Those voyages from one world to another—Departure included—were the most emotionally fraught times of Xehanort’s life. Sometimes he was full of anticipation, and sometimes regret. Sometimes excitement, and sometimes resentment. He believed all it would take was one trip together, and that once Eraqus saw what he was missing out on, he’d change his mind in a heartbeat.

But the problem wasn’t that Eraqus didn’t know what he was missing. He just didn’t want it.

It took Xehanort an embarrassingly long time to come to terms with that, but once he did, he never bothered to extend the invitation again. The truth was clearer than glass: there was simply no way for him to be with Eraqus and still get what he ultimately wanted out of life. One of his goals would always impede the other. There would always be a sacrifice involved; it was just a matter of making the right one. And if he didn’t, then it was just a matter of learning to live with it.

“_The future—it’s already been written_.”

Xehanort frowns. Maybe his younger self retained more memories from the future than he realized. Or maybe he had just been trying to sound cool.

Still, pre-written futures have lost their shine. He’d give anything for a blank horizon again.

Right on cue, as if Eraqus has always known how to reassure Xehanort, even across a lifetime, his voice drifts through the hall: “_—will prevail. You might be surprised_.”

Xehanort waits for his own reply. And waits. And when he realizes that too much time has passed, he reaches for the door. He pauses, laying his palm against the wood without applying pressure.

Eraqus wanted resolution, above all else. He would rather abandon their favorite spot forever than risk “ruining” its specialness with new memories. He would rather see their relationship utterly collapse in a way he understood than live with the uncertainty of a future reconciliation.

Eraqus believed in closing doors, but Xehanort believes in opening them. And as he’s the only one left to make the choice, he pushes the door to the training hall open and steps inside.

His eyes go straight to the windowsill, and he’s both relieved and disappointed to see that it’s empty. No boys sitting on it, leaning toward each other with a chess board between them. The dust indicates that no one has done anything of the sort for years. Xehanort doesn’t enter the room any further, feeling like that would be too much of a transgression, even for him. It seems there are still some lines he will not cross.

The glamor that keeps the rest of Scala looking bright and clean seems to have passed this place by. Even from across the room, Xehanort can see the yellowing of the limp curtains, the dingy windowpanes that used to let the light through. Cobwebs in the corners, tarnish on the fixtures. One of Scala’s most important and revered halls, reduced to an attic of forgotten relics.

Time is pressing on, pressing in, but Xehanort stays for a while, just past the threshold. No Name’s old mantle is a shadow of its former self, like everything else. Even if Xehanort planned to hang his sword back on the wall, he wouldn’t disgrace the ancient Keyblade by returning it to its mantle, not with the sorry state it’s in. Just like he won’t disgrace his old seat by the window, with the sorry state he’s in.

He’s standing up straight, he realizes, for the first time in a long, long time. His head is raised, and his shoulders have rolled back, almost relaxed. The chess hall isn’t the first room to try to lure him inside with dialogue and old memories, but it’s the only one that succeeded. It doesn’t have its guard up the way the rest of Scala does. And now that Xehanort is here, it’s dropped the show. Its silence is neither punishing nor welcoming. It simply is.

Xehanort gazes at the empty windowsill until his brain and his heart are quiet, feeling an unfamiliar and refreshing lack of anything. When he’s had his fill, he turns around and goes back out the door, leaving it ajar, just as he found it. If there are any memories still living in that room, they’ll be able to hear him finish their conversation through the crack in the door, as he quietly says, “I hope so.”

There’s nothing more to say, and he makes for the entrance hall to see his self-imposed journey through to the end, whatever that end may be. He has no answers, no signposts, no future selves retracing their own footprints and leaving bread crumbs for him to follow. He neither needs nor wants them. He’s done fine work setting the board himself.

A shudder passes over the water, through the air, speeding up the windmills ever so slightly. The Keyblade’s chosen one is about to arrive, and not a moment too soon. After decades of splitting his heart and body, Xehanort has finally caught up with his own life, his own self. His future is no longer a charted course, but a plain horizon once again, beautifully blank and filled only with possibilities: the creation of a new world, his own destruction, or something else entirely.

With No Name at his side, ghosts in his heart, and the towering might of Scala ad Caelum at his back, Xehanort steps out into the sunlight and follows the long road down to meet his destiny.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who's been following this series, even when it went from a slice of life anime to a gothic tragedy about an aging madman wandering through the halls of his tower, arguing with ghosts and memories because they're all he has left.  
...it was always gonna be kind of a downer ending.
> 
> I really appreciate all the feedback you guys have given me (and the artwork, which is beautiful and still kind of blows my mind to even think about). Thank you so much for commenting, sharing, leaving kudos, etc. I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it.


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